r ^ 
 
 SPEECH 
 
 AGAINST THE CON- 
 SCRIPT ACT 
 
 DELIVERED BY 
 
 THOS. E. WATSON 
 
 AT 
 
 THOMSON, GA. 
 JUNE 23, 1917 
 
 REPRINTED FROM 
 WATSON'S MAGAZINE 
 
 Jeffersonian Publishing Co. 
 Thomson, Ga. 
 
 
Speech Delivered by TRos. iE.gWatson, at 
 
 Mass Meeting iat TEomson, Ga., 
 
 June 23, 1917 
 
 FELLOW-CITIZENS : 
 As perhaps most of you know, I 
 have had less to do in the calling to- 
 gether of this assemblage, than with " 
 any other meeting here in Thomson, 
 that I ever addressed. 
 
 Neither in The Jetfersotiian, nor in 
 any other paper, within my knowledge, 
 has my name been mentioned — and no 
 one has been authorized to state that 
 I would appear here, as one of the 
 speakers. 
 
 The extent of my personal connec- 
 tion with it, was the assurance given 
 by me to a committee of my Dearing 
 friends, that, if the people saw fit to 
 hold such a meeting, I, as a citizen, 
 a taxpayer, and a lover of my country, 
 would be present, and give my views 
 on the subject which so profoundly agi- 
 tates the public mind. 
 
 In the years gone by, we have held 
 many a mass-meeting in this Court- 
 Eoom. 
 
 Nearly thirty years ago, we started, 
 in this room, the great fight on the 
 Jute Bagging Trust — a fight which 
 spread from this coun-ty, to other coun- 
 ties throughout the State— and from 
 this Stte to other States, until all 
 Dixieland was in revolt against an op- 
 pressive combination, which was re- 
 morselessly victimizing the cotton- 
 growers of the South ; and as you well 
 remember, the movement which we 
 started, here in this Court House, 
 finally brought that insolent Trust to 
 its knees. 
 
 That was nearly thirty years ago: 
 many of those who are here today, 
 were not here then ; and many of those 
 who were here then, are not here today, 
 nor will they ever meet with us again, 
 in this world. 
 
 Man}" of you, like myself, have lived 
 out the greater part of your lives — 
 
 there are more years behind you, than 
 there are before you. 
 
 Personally, I haA'e perhaps less in- 
 terest in the recent acts of the govern- 
 ment, than almost any citizen, for I am 
 too old for military service, have no 
 son who comes within the act of con- 
 scription, and my only grandchildren 
 are little girls. Therefore, long before 
 the most of the consequences which I 
 fear, from this new Congressional legis- 
 lation, can come upon the country, my 
 dust will have mingled with that of 
 my ancesors, who, like yours, fought 
 and suffered and bled, to establish 
 those liberties that are now endangered. 
 
 All over this country roundabout — 
 on hill and plain, and valley, those 
 heroic forefathers of ours marched — 
 hungry, tattered, barefooted — leaving 
 bloody footprints to tell which way 
 they marched, on their route to the 
 battlefields where they won the glori- 
 ous right of independent self-govern- 
 ment. 
 
 Are we a lot of degenerates ? 
 
 Have we lost the spirit of robust 
 manhood ? 
 
 Are we such cowards that we dare 
 not re-assert our historic rights, and 
 demand that the government respect 
 them ? 
 
 All over this country you hear peo- 
 ple say they are afraid to speak out 
 against what Congress has done. 
 
 They are afraid to sign a petition 
 for the redress of grievances. 
 
 In some cases, those who have signed, 
 become frightened, and they send word 
 to have their names taken otf. 
 
 They are afraid they will be arrest- 
 ed; they're afraid they'll be put in jail. 
 
 They are intimidated by the word 
 
 On the streets, in the newspaper of- 
 fices, and on the highways, there's a 
 
 589154 
 
new crop of lawyers, suddenly born 
 into the world, who are experts in con- 
 stitutional law. 
 
 They went to sleep last night with 
 their heads pillowed on the Code, and 
 they woke lip this morning with their 
 brains saturated with the principles of 
 jurisprudence ! 
 
 These spring-branch lawyers, swarm- 
 ing throughout the land, tell you, that 
 if you criticise Congress, it's "Trea- 
 son!" 
 
 If 3"ou abuse the President, it's 
 "Treason!" 
 
 If you condemn the recent course of 
 the government — it's "Treason!" 
 
 Before I go any further, let me tell 
 3^ou, once for all, that the Constitution 
 of the United States said the last word 
 on treason, and this supreme law of 
 the Republic, exclusively defines what 
 treason is, and ever shall be, so long as 
 that Supreme Law remains unamend- 
 ed by three-fourths of the States. 
 
 Our forefathers did not intend that 
 the barbaric treason laws of England 
 should ever become the excuse for ju- 
 dicial murder, in this free Eepublic. 
 
 They did not intend that any man 
 should be put to death for anything he 
 said, or anything he wrote. 
 
 They meant to bury, forever, the 
 constructive treason of the British stat- 
 utes, and therefore they not only de- 
 fined treason in the Constitution, but 
 they used the word "only," which in 
 that connection, weighs a ton. 
 
 Congress has no authority to abolish 
 that word "only." 
 
 Congress has no authority to modify 
 that definition of treason. 
 
 No act of the President, no act of 
 the two Houses, no decision of the Su- 
 preme Court, no legislative action of 
 any State, can enlarge or diminish, the 
 constitutional definition of treason. 
 
 Let me read it to you : 
 
 "Treason against the United States 
 shall consist only in leA'^nng war 
 against them, or adhering to their en- 
 emies [in time of war], giving them aid 
 and comfort. No person shall be con- 
 victed of treason, unless on the testi- 
 mon}^ of two witnesses to the same 
 overt act, or confession in open court." 
 
 Have you been waging war by open 
 
 acts of hostility against the govern- 
 ment ? 
 
 Have you taken your Winchester 
 ririe and fired upon the State of 
 Georgia ? 
 
 Have you gathered up your six- 
 shooter or shotgun, and gone on the 
 war-path against the State of Tennes- 
 see? 
 
 If so, you are guilty of treason. 
 
 Have you, since the second day of 
 April, 1917, openly aided and abetted 
 the German Kaiser, by giving him a 
 battleship or a submarine, or a cargo 
 of ammunition? 
 
 If so, 3^ou are guilty of treason ! 
 
 The next time one of these wet- 
 weather branch limbs of the law, 
 threatens you with arrest and impris- 
 onment for treason, j^ou shake your 
 finger in his face and tell him you 
 know what your legal rights are, and 
 that you defy any man, official or 
 otherwise, to harm a hair of your head, 
 until a grand jury of your county has 
 indicted you, and a petit jury has re- 
 turned a verdict of "guilty." 
 
 In every city and town the corpora- 
 tion has its local ordinances, and in 
 every one of these there is an India- 
 rubber provision against disorderly 
 conduct. Under the administration of 
 an arbitrary mayor, council or police 
 court, it is possible for almost any un- 
 usual conduct to be punished as "dis- 
 orderly." 
 
 But — no citizen of this Republic can 
 be tried, for any alleged crime against 
 the State, or the Federal government, 
 unless the gi'and jury indicts, and the 
 petit jury convicts. 
 
 Whenever you are threatened with 
 a prosecution for treason or sedition, 
 or any other of these offenses that are 
 being hinted about, answer back: "I 
 demand indictment by the grand jury, 
 and am ready to give bond for my ap- 
 pearance to stand trial, if indicted." 
 
 That demand stops everything until 
 the grand inquest, composed of vour 
 fellow-citizens, in your own county or 
 Federal district, have formulated legal 
 charges against you. 
 
 Of course, if you couldn't give the 
 bond, you would have to lie in jail, 
 awaiting the action of the grand jury. 
 
 Southern P,.,^phlets 
 Rare Book CollGcf.i„« 
 
Is it such a very terrible thing to lie 
 in jail? 
 
 Does the thought of such a thing 
 turn your backbone into water? 
 
 Does your manly courage ooze out, 
 at the very thought of having to go 
 to jail? 
 
 Better men than you and I have gone 
 to jail, and lain there year in and year 
 out, rather than budge an inch, before 
 the aggressions of tyranny, or surren- 
 der one iota of conscientious convic- 
 tions and rights. 
 
 John Bunyan was jflung into jail, and 
 he lay there seven years, when he could 
 have walked out any day, a free man, 
 if he had bent the knee to legalized op- 
 pression. 
 
 Roger Williams braved the terrors of 
 the wilderness, and made himself a 
 rude home among the savages, rather 
 than abate one jot or tittle of conscien- 
 tious conviction. 
 
 John Wesley was hounded, and per- 
 secuted, and ostracised in his heroic 
 battle for what he believed to be right. 
 
 Jefferson Davis was arrested, put in 
 prison, and shackled like a common 
 criminal. 
 
 Alexander H. Stephens was arrested 
 and put in prison. 
 
 Daniel O'Connell, the Irish orator, 
 statesman and liberator, was flung into 
 prison. 
 
 The immortal heroes of the long, 
 hard struggle for the establishment of 
 those very liberties which your govern- 
 ment is lessening by arbitrary Acts of 
 Congress, were flung into dungeons, 
 and were led forth from those dun- 
 geons, to the fatal block, where the ex- 
 ecutioner of a tyrannical law struck off 
 their heads with the axe, 
 
 Algernon Sidney and William Rus- 
 sell are names whose lustre time 
 will never dim — ^and when we, 
 who inherited the liberties for 
 which they died, shall have ceased to 
 prize them sufficiently to run some risk 
 in maintaining them, our great Anglo- 
 Saxon race will have become basely de- 
 generate, and we will have proved our- 
 selves unworthy of our birthright. 
 
 Let us consider for a moment, the 
 situation in which we find ourselves. 
 
 Never before were our people so widely 
 and deeply agitated. 
 
 Never before were a people confront- 
 ed with such a complexity of troubles, 
 so unexpectedly. 
 
 Just a year ago your Representative 
 in Congress was facing you, as I am do- 
 ing now, and begging for your votes. 
 
 Not one whisper came from him, to 
 put you on notice, that when you voted 
 for him in November, he would vir- 
 tually forfeit the liberty and the life 
 of your boy, before another twelve- 
 month would roll around. 
 
 Let us be fair to everybody, and let 
 us assume that the candidate himself 
 did not dream, that when he received 
 the benefit of your support, last No- 
 vember, he would break your heart, 
 with HIS vote, in Congress, the next 
 spring. 
 
 Just a year ago, candidates for the 
 United States Senate were abroad in 
 the land, asking for an endorsement of 
 their stewardship, and a renewal of 
 their commission. 
 
 Not the slightest hint fell from any 
 of these candidates, to put you on no- 
 tice, that if you returned them to the 
 highest law-making body on this earth, 
 they would, in less than six months, 
 so violate your highest law, and tram- 
 ple upon your guaranteed constitu- 
 tional rights, as to darken your home 
 forevermore, and bring down the head 
 of your wife, under the crushing load 
 of maternal grief. 
 
 Let us be fair to those Senators, and 
 take it for granted that they them- 
 selves, at that time, had no idea of the 
 enormity that they would commit, by 
 voting for conscription so soon after 
 re-election. 
 
 This time last year the President of 
 the United States was facing great as- 
 semblages of the people throughout the 
 country, and was fervently pleading for 
 peace against such fire-eaters and war- 
 champions as Theodore Roosevelt, 
 Henry Cabot Lodge, and Charles E. 
 Hughes. 
 
 Those fervent appeals of the Presi- 
 dent called forth the passionate appro- 
 val of the vast majority, and the wives 
 and mothers and sisters especially, took 
 
up the slogan, and made the Republic 
 ring with it : "He kept us out of war ! " 
 
 That was November, 1916 — where 
 then was the Lusitania ? 
 
 It la.y at the bottom of the deep blue 
 sea, where it had lain since Mav 5, 
 1915. 
 
 Where were the hundred and nine- 
 teen American travellers, Elbert Hub- 
 bard and his wife, young Vanderbilt, 
 and the other husbands and wives, that 
 went down with the ship? And the 
 little children, clinging in terror to the 
 skirts of their mothers' dresses? 
 
 Their bones were bleaching on the 
 lonely seashore of the Irish coast, 
 where the unfeeling waves had washed 
 them, nearly two years before ! 
 
 What about the dynamite outrages? 
 
 They were all in the past, dating long 
 before the November election. 
 
 The principal criminals who had 
 perpetrated those dastardly crimes 
 against our munition plants and our 
 workmen, had been permitted to go 
 back to Germany, to receive the re- 
 wards of the Kaiser ; and they had re- 
 turned, with garments that reeked with 
 innocent American blood, on safe con- 
 ducts granted by the British govern- 
 ment reluctantly, out of respect for the 
 personal and official request of Presi- 
 dent Woodrow Wilson. 
 
 Where were the Belgian atrocities? 
 and the barbarisms inflicted by Ger- 
 many upon Northern France? 
 
 They all lay in the past, the very 
 worst of them having been committed 
 m August and September, 1914. 
 
 But let us be fair to President Wil- 
 son also, and let us assume that when 
 he accepted another term in the high- 
 est office on earth, he did not then 
 realize that in one short month, after 
 he renewed his official oath, he would 
 be plunging his country into the blood- 
 iest abyss that ever opened to swallow 
 the human race, and that every cause 
 of war that he now assigns as a justi- 
 fication for his complete reversal of 
 position, antedates the day he was re- 
 elected, because he "kept us out of 
 war." 
 
 Never before were general conditions 
 so appalling. 
 
 6 
 
 The human race has never been free 
 from inequalities and injustice. 
 
 From the very dawn of time, some 
 have been prosperous and some unfor- 
 tunate; some rich, and some poor — but 
 never, in all the lapse of the ages, 
 have there been such stupendous in- 
 equalities and injustices as now exist 
 between classes and masses in this Re- 
 public. 
 
 Never before were such prodigious 
 burdens of taxation laid upon the peo- 
 ple, to be paid, not mainly by the rich, 
 but mainly by the poor. 
 
 Bonded debts, to run for thirty years, 
 in sums so immense they stagger the 
 human mind : one bill, for military ex- 
 penditures, reaching the almost incred- 
 ible sum of three thousand millions of 
 dollars, and the President, in addition 
 to that, insisting on another appropria- 
 tion of six hundred and twenty-five 
 millions of dollars, for airships. 
 
 In Washington City it is a carnival 
 of wild extravagance : an orgy of prod- 
 igal waste: a Bacchanalian revel of 
 men who act as though they were drunk 
 on power ,and had lost every sense of 
 shame, duty, and responsibility. 
 
 The expenses of the war have been 
 so adjusted by the Senate Finance 
 Committee, that they fall chiefly upon 
 the masses. 
 
 The huge appropriations made will 
 accrue to the benefit of the classes. 
 
 Great is the gathering of the vul- 
 tures at the National Capital, for never 
 before has there been such a carcass 
 inviting them to the feast. 
 
 Three thousand millions of dollars in 
 one appropriation! and the vultures 
 fiercely shrieking for more. 
 
 The necessaries of life put further 
 and further away from the reach of 
 the common people, by the lawless and 
 insatiable combinations of Capital. 
 
 The food gambler committing crimes 
 here in free AmxCrica, almost equal to 
 those inflicted bj' enraged victors upon 
 conquered territories in Europe. 
 
 The necessaries of life, incredible to 
 tell, higher in New York, Chicago, 
 Boston, Atlanta, St. Louis and Balti- 
 more, than they are in London and 
 Paris and Brussels. 
 
It is absurd to say we are menaced 
 by German danger. 
 
 German}^ cannot send troops here in 
 submarines. 
 
 Germany has no fleet on sea : Eng- 
 land has: we have. In what way does 
 she endanger us ? 
 
 The Law of Nations and our own 
 common sense, tell us that what Eng- 
 land, France, and 'Germany do to each 
 other, is none of our business. 
 
 It is not cause for us to send a 
 million of our boj^s, to sacrifice their 
 lives, so far from home. 
 
 Ten millions of our young men sud- 
 denlj^ made the helpless subjects of a 
 new duty to the government, never 
 heard of in any discussion before the 
 people, and never heard of before in 
 the history of the human race, outside 
 of Prussianized Europe. 
 
 Ten million free American citizens 
 suddenly and peremptorily ordered to 
 quit their vocations and to attend a 
 newly-constituted tribune, to be regis- 
 tered like a lot of dumb cattle. To be 
 chatechised by an inquisitorial process 
 recently invented. 
 
 To be compelled, virtuall}^ to strip 
 their persons naked to the eye of the 
 Federal inquisitor, and threatened with 
 a sentence of a year in jail, if they 
 hesitate to perform this new, unheard 
 of duty, and to submit their persons 
 to that naturally repugnant inquisi- 
 torial examination. 
 
 Is it any wonder that the country is 
 in a state of consternation? 
 
 Is it any wonder that j^oung men 
 are terrified, and that fathers and 
 mothers are distracted, half-crazed by 
 natural fears, anxieties and grief? 
 
 The jails are being filled, officers are 
 scouring the country, searching for 
 those who did not promptly respond to 
 the new law. 
 
 Editors are menaced with Federal 
 prosecutions, for daring to speak their 
 minds; the new doctrine is being held 
 that the Constitution is suspended dur- 
 ing the time of war, when everybody 
 ought to know that the Constitution is 
 not suspended, and cannot be, and that 
 martial law does not extend beyond the 
 actual soldiers and the actual army, 
 unless martial law be proclaimed in the 
 
 different localities, in accordance with 
 the statutes, providing for just such 
 contingencies. 
 
 In the whole history of the world, 
 no government ever demanded such 
 powers as this administration insists 
 upon. 
 
 England was in the war with four 
 million volunteers, and for three years, 
 before conscription was adopted by 
 the British Parliament, as the last re- 
 sort to cope with Roman Catholic trea- 
 son in Ireland and Canada. 
 
 No food dictator was thought of in 
 Germany, until the second year of the 
 war. 
 
 Australia gave her people a vote on 
 conscription, and the Canadian gov- 
 ernment is even now refusing to resort 
 to it, unless the people approve it, at 
 the polls. 
 
 But in this country, before we are 
 actually in any war; when nothing but 
 the remotest dangers can be conjured 
 up ; when no enemy is marching 
 against us ; when our fleet and the Eng- 
 lish fleet are in such absolute control 
 of the oceans, that not a smgle German 
 vessel, capable of bearing troops, dares 
 to show itself out of its own harbor — 
 we are saddled with conscription; we 
 are threatened with a food dictator- 
 ship; we are menaced with a national 
 price-fixer, and we are not yet secure 
 from the President's strenuous efforts 
 to compel Congress to give him the 
 right to gag the newspapers. 
 
 Think of it ! 
 
 Who could have dreamed it, last No- 
 vember ? 
 
 When I recall how President Wilson 
 has clamorously contended for the 
 right to enslave the press, in utter vio- 
 lation of one of the plainest provisions 
 of our supreme law, it seems to me I 
 can hear, as well as see, in the mind's 
 eye, the brilliant and fearless Irish ora- 
 tor, Eichard Brinsley Sheridan, when 
 4ie stood forward in the British Parlia- 
 ment to denounce the royal ministers 
 who, during the regency of the Prince 
 of Wales, were attempting to shackle 
 the press. 
 
 With eyes that blazed with indig- 
 nant fires, and in tones that rang like 
 the clarion's call, he thrilled that au- 
 
gust assembly as few orators have ever 
 done. 
 
 Cried he: "Give them a corrupt 
 House of Lords; give them a venal 
 House of Commons; give them a 
 tyrannical Prince; give them a truck- 
 ling court ; and give to me but an unfet- 
 tered press, I will defy them to en- 
 croach one inch upon the liberties of 
 England!" 
 
 Great God ! How hard it is to real- 
 ize that in one crisis of the long fight 
 President Wilson waged against the 
 freedom of the press, a difference of 
 less than half a dozen votes would 
 have effected that high-handed outrage 
 upon the Constitution of the Unitod 
 States, and destroyed one of the most 
 precious heirlooms of American lib- 
 erty. 
 
 Upon the pretext of waging war 
 against Prussianism in Europe, the 
 purpose of Prussianizing this country 
 has been avowed in Congress, with bru- 
 tal frankness, by a spokesman of the 
 Administration. 
 
 On the pretext of sending armies 
 to Euroj)e, to crush militarism there, 
 we first enthrone it here. 
 
 On the pretext of carrying to all the 
 nations of the world the liberties won 
 by the heroic life-blood of our fore- 
 fathers, we first deprive our own people 
 of liberties they inherited as a birth- 
 right. 
 
 On the pretext of unchaining the en- 
 slaved peoples of other lands, we first 
 chain our own people with preposter- 
 ous and unprecedented measures, know- 
 ing full well that usurpations of power, 
 once submitted to, will never hereafter 
 be voluntarily restored to the people. 
 
 Let us examine these new acts of 
 Congress, and endeavor to ascertain 
 whether they violate the Constitution 
 of the United States and the time-hon- 
 ored principles of Anglo-Saxon lib- 
 erty: if they do, we should be able to 
 demonstrate that fact, and if we can 
 succeed with such a demonstration, our 
 representatives in Congress should be 
 willing to repeal the offending statutes. 
 
 First of all, I beg to remind you that 
 the Revolutionary War began with the 
 
 contention on the part of our fore- 
 fathers, that they inherited the liber- 
 ties of the Mother Country. 
 
 Let us read once more the first of the 
 Resolutions which Patrick Henry of- 
 fered in the Virginia House of Bur- 
 gesses, in May, 1765. 
 It reads as follows: 
 
 "Resolved, that the first adventurers 
 and settlers of this. His Majesty's Col- 
 ony and Dominion, brought with them 
 and transmitted to their posterity . . . 
 all the privileges, franchises, and 
 immunities that have, at any time, been 
 held, enjoyed and possessed by the peo- 
 ple of Great Britain." 
 
 Of course, the immediate result of 
 Mr. Henry's assertion was to make good 
 the position against the Stamp Act — to 
 wit: that it was the right of an Eng- 
 lishman not to be taxed, without rep- 
 resentation. But the Resolution itself 
 states the broad truth, which was aft- 
 erward embodied in many a superb de- 
 cision of our highest courts, namely, 
 that our forefathers brought with them 
 from England, the native, original lib- 
 erties of Englishmen, and those liber- 
 ties cannot be taken from him or his 
 descendants, without their consent. 
 
 Among the papers of Patrick Henry, 
 found after his death, was one in which 
 he stated that he wrote his Resolutions 
 on the blank leaf of an old law book, 
 without consulting with any one, and 
 without the aid of any one. 
 
 He said in that solemn paper, 
 which he evidently meant as a dying 
 statement, that his Resolutions pro- 
 voked violent debates, and that many 
 threats were uttered against him, and 
 that much abuse was cast upon him by 
 those wlio favored submission to the 
 British Parliament. 
 
 His Resolution passed by a very 
 small majority — perhaps of one or two 
 only, but he had taken the legal posi- 
 tion which was as impregnable as the 
 Rock of Gibraltar, and the contagion of 
 Virginia's example spread to other 
 States, bringing on the Revolutionary 
 War, the Independence of the new 
 Colonies, and thus our Constitution of 
 1787, which was meant to perpetuate 
 those free English principles, on which 
 
 8 
 
Patrick Henry spoke with such tor- 
 rents of sublime eloquence. 
 
 (See Tyler's Patrick Henry, p. 62. 
 Also pp. 75 and 76.) 
 
 As every lawyer who has really stud- 
 ied the principles of English law is 
 well aware, the Great Charter of the 
 year 1215, was nothing moi"e than a re- 
 affirmance by the Barons, and a re- 
 acknowledgement by the Norman King, 
 of the ancient and original liberties of 
 our race. 
 
 The germs of those principles, as of 
 all our free institutions, existed in Ger- 
 many, before the great Teutonic tribes 
 separated — some going to France, some 
 to Britain, some to lands beyond the 
 seas. 
 
 The peculiar, original and native 
 rights of Englishmen were preserved 
 and handed down in what was called 
 the unwritten law, the common law of 
 England. Two of those principles are 
 as clear as the unclouded sun, and as 
 old as organized European society. 
 
 One is, that no citizen can be sent 
 out of the country unless he consents 
 to it. 
 
 Another is, that no citizen can be de- 
 prived of his property, of his liberty, 
 of his life, without due process of law. 
 Will any member of the legal pro- 
 fession challenge this statement? 
 
 From the shysters and the petty 
 place-men of the hour, arrogant in the 
 joy of a little brief authority, I appeal 
 to that nobler type of lawyer, who has 
 never failed to make himself at every 
 crisis, the champion of the people, the 
 unquailing, unpurchas.able, unterrified 
 advocate of those grand old principles 
 of English law and liberty — to this 
 type of lawyer throughout the Union 
 I confidently appeal: the type of law- 
 yer which put the name of Samuel 
 Romilly and Edward Coke, and Henry 
 Grattan, John Philpot Curran, Daniel 
 O'Connell, Henry Brougham, Thos. 
 Erskine and Hugo Grotius at the very 
 forefront of human achievement and 
 glory — I make my appeal to that type 
 of lawyer which emblazoned the record 
 of our profession with the names of 
 James Otis, Dabney Carr, Patrick 
 Henry, Luther Martin, Edmund Ran- 
 dolph, George Wyth^, and Thos. Jef- 
 
 ferson : to the type which in later days 
 gave us such tribunes as Alex. H. 
 Stephens, Benj. H. Hill, and Robert 
 Toombs. 
 
 Let us go back to first principles : let 
 us take down from the shelves those 
 standard old law books which we bent 
 over at midnight when we were stu- 
 dents of the law, many and many long 
 years ago. 
 
 Is it not time that we should be ex- 
 amining the foundations of our system 
 of government? 
 
 Is it not time that we were endeavor- 
 ing to re-mark, re-establish and firmly 
 define the boundary lines of our blood- 
 bought liberties? 
 
 Oh, my countrymen ! You who are 
 today living in a home that came down 
 to you from your fathers: "you who 
 • have been in peaceable possession all 
 your life, succeeding a father who him- 
 self had lived in peaceable possession 
 — your home is sacred to you, by the 
 memories of your whole existence: by 
 dear associations, and by the graves 
 of your ancestors who went to their 
 long sleep, believing that the sacred 
 old spot would never be desecrated by 
 the feet of the violent, lawless tres- 
 passer. 
 
 Suppose you should suddenly awake 
 to the fact that the trespasser has come 
 upon your inherited and sanctified 
 premises, and was threatening to put 
 you out by force of arms — how much 
 time would you lose in getting ready 
 for self-protection? 
 
 How much time would you lose in 
 hunting up your old title deeds, and 
 making yourself doubly sure of your 
 rights and your land-lines? 
 
 Nationally speaking, the trespasser is 
 on your reservation. 
 
 The lawless intruder threatens to 
 drive you out. 
 
 Let us lose no time in making the 
 voice of the people heard. Let us 
 hasten, without the loss of a day, to 
 examine our muniments of title. 
 
 I cannot believe that popular sov- 
 ereignty is dead. 
 
 I will not believe that courage is ex- 
 tinct in the people. 
 
 Until invincible facts convince me 
 otherwise, I will believe that you will 
 
show yourselves men enough to stand 
 for your rights, and to preserve those 
 liberties which your forefathers were 
 brave enough to win. 
 
 Is the English common law a part 
 of the law of the United States? 
 
 Turn to that masterly and accepted 
 standard, Cooley's Constitutional Lim- 
 itations. In Chapter III., the learned 
 author first mentions the Constitution 
 of the United States, and the Consti- 
 tutions of the verious States, and then 
 adds "But, besides this fundamental 
 law, every State has also a body of 
 laws, prescribing the rights, duties and 
 obligations of persons Avithin its juris- 
 diction, etc." 
 
 "By far the larger and more valu- 
 able portion of that body of laws con- 
 sisted of the Common Law of England, 
 which had been transplanted in the 
 American wilderness, etc." 
 
 Judge Cooley then proceeds to de- 
 scribe the Common Law of Engla-nd, 
 and he says : "It was the peculiar ex- 
 cellence of the Common Law of Eng- 
 land that it recognized the worth and 
 sought especially to protect the rights 
 and privileges of the individual man. 
 Its maxim did not recognize arbitrary 
 power and uncontrolled authority. The 
 humblest subject might shut the door 
 of his cottage, against the king, and 
 defend from intrusion that privacy 
 which was as sacrced as the royal pre- 
 rogatives. 
 
 The system was the opposite of ser- 
 vile; its features implied boldness and 
 independence, self-reliance on the part 
 of the people." 
 
 Then Judge Cooley speaks glowingly 
 of how the American Colonists claimed 
 for themselves all the rights conferred 
 upon Englishmen by the Common Law, 
 one of which was that trials for crime 
 must be by a jury of the neighborhood 
 in which the alleged criminal lived. 
 No punishment for crime, until after 
 indictment by the grand jury, and the 
 unanimous verdict of the twelve in the 
 box. 
 
 Then Judge Cooley says that by this 
 English Comruon Law which became, 
 through adoption, the American Com- 
 mon Law, American risrhts are ad- 
 
 judged, and wrongs redressed, in great 
 part to this day. 
 
 Therefore, no lawyer can deny that 
 the great principles of the English 
 Common Law are ours now, just as 
 they have been the heritage of our great 
 unconquerable race ever since it mi- 
 grated from the forests of Germany. 
 
 To the same effect. Chancellor Kent, 
 in his commentaries, states in his twen- 
 ty-first lecture, that the Common Law 
 is the apiDlication of the dictates of 
 natural justice, and of cultivated rea- 
 son to particular cases. 
 
 He quotes the language of Sir Mat- 
 thew Hale, who says that the Common 
 Law is not the product of the wisdom 
 of some one man, or society of men, 
 or any one age; but of the wisdom, 
 counsel, experience and observation of 
 many ages of wise and observing men. 
 
 Chancellor Kent repeats the accepted 
 doctrine, that the English Colonists 
 brought with them to this country those 
 Common Law principles .which pecu- 
 liarly concern themselves with the pro- 
 tection of the individual citizen in his 
 personal liberties and rights. 
 
 (Kent's Commentaries, Vol. I., Sees. 
 469 and following.) 
 
 Therefore it is established beyond all 
 question, that those principles of the 
 Common Law which have not been 
 specifically set aside by the various 
 Constitutions, adopted by the people in 
 this Republic, are today a part of the 
 law of the land. 
 
 Let me give you an illustration : You 
 and I contracted statutory marriages; 
 we went to the Ordinary, applied for 
 a license, delivered that license to a 
 minister of the Gospel, and invoked his 
 services to perform the ceremony which 
 completed the statutory marriage. 
 
 But for thousands of years, it has 
 been the law among our people, that 
 the statutory' marriage was not the only 
 one. You could take your loved one 
 by the hand, she consenting, and lead 
 her to the presence of two or three 
 friends, and you could say to her: "I 
 take you for my wife, for better or for 
 worse, in. sickness and in health, till 
 death do us part." 
 
 And she could say to you: "I take 
 vou for mv husband, and I will be true 
 
 10 
 
to you as long as life shall last," and 
 these simple declarations, constituting 
 a civil contract between the free man 
 and the free woman, made a perfectly 
 legal marriage. 
 
 It is so in Georgia at this very day. 
 
 By the decision of the highest court 
 in the great State of New York, it is 
 the hiw of that imperial common- 
 wealth, at this very hour. 
 
 I mention this simply as an illustra- 
 tion of the Common Law, which you 
 will not find in any of the codes — State 
 or Federal. 
 
 In like manner, there are other Com- 
 mon Law rights which do not depend 
 upon written codes. One of these Com- 
 mon Law rights which, according to 
 Sir Edward Coke and Sir William 
 Blackstone, constitute a part of our 
 Common Law rights, is that of abiding 
 in our own country, so long as it is our 
 pleasure to remain there. 
 
 The most tyrannical king of England 
 never had the lawful power to send 
 a subject out of the realm against the 
 will of that subject. 
 
 The veriest plowman that ever wore 
 hodden gray and munched his crust of 
 dry bread, to satisfy his hunger at the 
 end of a day's work, could stand firmly 
 upon the soil of Old England and defy 
 the most tyrannical king who ever ar- 
 rayed himself in the purple and fine 
 linen of royal office, and could say to 
 that king : "It is my right to abide in 
 my native land." 
 
 No Act of Parliament could ever 
 banish the citizen, except as a punish- 
 ment for crime, after indictment by the 
 . grand jury, and the unanimous verdict 
 of the twelve in the box. 
 
 The soldier who voluntarily enlisted, 
 became of course a soldier for all pur- 
 poses, and he could be sent, at the com- 
 mand of his superiors, to the uttermost 
 ends of the earth, but I challenge any 
 lawyer in this Union to controvert the 
 proposition, that no subject of Great 
 Britain was ever forced out of those 
 islands against his will, prior to the 
 year 1917. except as a punishment for 
 crime, or because of his voluntary en- 
 listment, or illegal kidnapping, into the 
 Army and Navy. 
 
 I stand flat-footed upon that asser- 
 tion : I challenge contradiction ; I defy 
 the historian, or the lawyer, or the pub- 
 licist, or the arrogant official, who is 
 now cracking his whip over the intimi- 
 dated American people. 
 
 I defy him to show that any such 
 outrage was ever perpetrated upon the 
 men of Old England, as now threatens 
 the young men of this Republic. 
 
 (See Blackst one's Commentaries, 
 Book 1, Pars. 137-138, and the deci- 
 sions cited in the Sharswood Edition 
 of 1877.) 
 
 Another one of these original and 
 native rights of the Anglo-Saxon is, 
 that he shall not be deprived of his 
 property, his liberty, or his life, with- 
 out due process of law. 
 
 When that provision was written 
 into Magna Charta, 700 years ago, it 
 was not a new doctrine. It was an old 
 doctrine, reasserted by brave men who 
 had swords in their hands, and meant 
 to die as rebels against a tyrannical 
 king ,if he did not consent to the resto- 
 ration of that ancient birthright of all 
 Englishmen. 
 
 Those rebels who, with drawn 
 swords, confronted their usurping king 
 at Runnymede, in the year 1215, were 
 not clamoring for a novelty, innova- 
 tion, or revolutionary change. 
 
 On the contrary, they unfurled their 
 banners, erected the standard of re- 
 bellion, and drew their swords against 
 the king, to prevent a revolutionary 
 change of law which threatened to de- 
 stroy the rights of the individual, and 
 to give the king unlimited power over 
 the property and the persons of Eng- 
 lishmen. 
 
 Rather than submit to this, they 
 preferred to fight, and to die. 
 
 (See Cooley's Constitutional Limi- 
 tations, Chap. III. and notes: pars. 
 311, 314: 209: 430.) 
 
 Has the terrible necessity come upon 
 us again to learn, that in every govern- 
 ment, the tendency of power is, to en- 
 croach ? 
 
 Human nature is just so constituted 
 that no mortal can be safely trusted 
 with too much authority; he will 
 abuse it; the record of the human 
 
 11 
 
race teaches this with a sadder empha- 
 sis, than almost any other lesson. 
 
 Patrick Henry said, in the times that 
 tried men's souls: "Eternal vigilance 
 is the price of liberty." 
 
 Herbert Spencer said, that in all re- 
 publics, the existence of free principles 
 depended upon prompt and fearless re- 
 sistance to the encroachments of those 
 who are in power. 
 
 At this very day, when weak citi- 
 zens throughout the land are commit- 
 ting suicide, because of the horrible 
 measures recently adopted by the Wil- 
 son administration, there is an impera- 
 tive demand upon the stronger men, 
 that they denounce these unlawful en- 
 croachments, and combat these uncon- 
 stitutional acts of Congress, by those 
 peaceable methods, which the wise 
 foresight of our ancestors provided in 
 the Supreme Law, for that very pur- 
 pose. 
 
 By the original, native rights of our 
 great white race, every member of this 
 unconquerable family was safeguarded 
 in his property, in his liberty, in his 
 life — until a jury of his equals, after 
 hearing all the evidence, both ways, 
 decided that they were forfeited. 
 
 The property might be the humblest 
 little bit of scraggy land, with a ruined 
 hut upon it, as the great Earl of 
 Chatham said in the British Parlia- 
 ment ; it might be a ruinous tenement 
 in which the snow and the rain could 
 beat and enter, but the King of Eng- 
 land could not cross that threshold, 
 without the written authority of the 
 law. 
 
 The citizen who was thus protected 
 by the primeval principles of Anglo- 
 Saxon law, might be the very hum- 
 blest, meanest, most insignificant of all 
 human beings, but the law was no re- 
 specter of persons: it drew no line be- 
 tween the palace and the hovel: it 
 thought no more of Di\5es, at the ban- 
 quet board, than of Lazarus, grovelling 
 at the gate. 
 
 Great God ! Must we Americans of 
 this twentieth century bid farewell to 
 those sacred principles of personal lib- 
 erty, that were as sturdy as the oaks 
 in the German forests, when Jesus 
 Christ, a homeless wanderer in Pales- 
 
 tine, was preaching his Sermon on the 
 Mount ? 
 
 Have we lived to see the day when 
 the revered name of Democracy will 
 be prostituted to the most terrible 
 wrongs that were ever perpetrated 
 against a free people, whose inherited, 
 priceless, blood-bought jewels of per- 
 sonal rights were fondly believed to 
 be treasured forever in the casket of 
 constitutional law? 
 
 Let us consider for a moment the 
 meaning of the words: "no man shall 
 be deprived of life, liberty or prop- 
 erty, without due process of law" : does 
 that mean by act of the Legislature, or 
 by act of Congress? If so, it was a 
 waste of time to write them into that 
 permament declaration called the Con- 
 stitution, which Congress was forbid- 
 den to change, unless three- fourths of 
 the States, by legislative action, de- 
 manded that change. 
 
 If there is any principle, which no 
 competent lawyer will dispute, it is that 
 the Constitution of the United States 
 which the President swears to support^ 
 must be supported as written, until 
 amended in the manner which the Con- 
 stitution itself prescribes. 
 
 President Woodrow Wilson, on the 
 4th of March, 1917, called God and 
 the people to witness that he renewed 
 his oath of fidelity to this Constitu- 
 tion. 
 
 In that Constitution it is written in 
 the plainest possible language, that no 
 citizen of this Kepublic shall be robbed 
 of his liberty, coerced in his conduct, 
 made to serve against his will, except 
 by due process of law. 
 
 Again I appeal to all lawyers to 
 speak out, and tell the people the mean- 
 ing of those words. 
 
 Time and again the highest authori- 
 ties, the standard writers, the highest 
 courts have held, that an Act of Con- 
 gress is not due process of law. 
 
 A statute passed by the Legislature, 
 is not due process of law. 
 
 No man can be deprived of his life, 
 by the Act of the Legislature. ^ 
 
 No man can be robbed of his prop- 
 erty, by Act of Congress. 
 
 The law of Eminent Domain subjects 
 your property to the service of your 
 
 12 
 
country, but the causes and the methods 
 are jealously guarded. 
 
 Judge Cooley in Chap, XI. of his 
 standard work, enters at large upon the 
 discussion of what is meant by the 
 phrases "due process of law," and "the 
 law of the land." 
 
 There never was a time in the history 
 of our Eepublic, when that chapter de- 
 served more prayerful consideration. 
 
 Sir William Blackstone said that the 
 Great Charter of our liberties would 
 have deserved its name, had it con- 
 tained no other provision than that "no 
 free man shall be taken, or imprisoned, 
 or disseized, or outlawed, or banished, 
 or any ways destroyed, nor will the 
 king pass upon him, or commit him to 
 prison, unless by the judgment of his 
 peers, or the law of the land." 
 
 No free man shall be taken ! 
 
 Thus spoke the Barons who held 
 their gleaming swords in their hands. 
 
 It was seven hundred and two years 
 ago, this summer. They were not pro- 
 claiming a new principle. They were 
 resurrecting an old one. They were 
 calling upon it to roll away the stone, 
 and to come forth radiant, with re- 
 newed life, from the sepulchre in which 
 a tyrannical monarch had haughtily 
 supposed he had buried it forever. 
 
 In this free Republic ten million free 
 men have already been taken, not by 
 due process of law, but by the arbitrary 
 act of a government, drunk on power ! 
 
 No free man shall be imprisoned ! 
 
 And yet the jails today are crowded 
 with free Americans whom no grand 
 jury has accused, and no traverse jury 
 convicted. 
 
 No free man shall be banished ! 
 
 And yet, by the living God, the Pres- 
 ident of the United States publicly de- 
 clares that we will banish millions of 
 American citizens, and send them to die 
 on foreign fields of blood ! 
 
 In the name of the Almighty, what 
 spirit of evil has taken possession of 
 the Federal government? 
 
 How is it that madness so rules the 
 hour in Washington? 
 
 Who can explain the spell of terror 
 which has fallen upon the once fear- 
 less and independent people of this 
 Union ? 
 
 Judge Cooley quotes the definition 
 laid down by Daniel Webster during 
 his argument in the celebrated Dart- 
 mouth College case: "by the law of the 
 land, is most clearly intended the gen- 
 eral law; a law Avhich hears, before it 
 condemns; which proceeds upon in- 
 quiry, and renders judgment only after 
 trial. The meaning is, that every citi- 
 zen shall hold his life, liberty, prop- 
 erty and immunities under the protec- 
 tion of the general rules which govern 
 society." 
 
 Judge Cooley says, par. 354, that a 
 legislative act is not necessarily the law 
 of the land. 
 
 He says that the words, "by the law 
 of the land," as used in the Constitu- 
 tion, do not mean a statute, passed for 
 the purpose of working the wrong. 
 That construetion would render the re- 
 striction absolutely nugatory, and turn 
 this part of the Constitution into mere 
 nonsense.'''' 
 
 The people would be made to say 
 to the two Houses (of Congress, of 
 course), "you shall be vested with the 
 legislative power of the State, but, no 
 one shall be disfranchised, or deprived 
 of any of the rights or privileges of a 
 citizen, unless you pass a statute for 
 that purpose. In other wordjs, you 
 shall not do the wrong, unless you 
 choose to do it!" 
 
 Could language be plainer? 
 
 Could any standard authority more 
 emphatically deny the right of Con- 
 gress to confiscate the liberties of the 
 citizen, by the mere passage of a statute 
 to that effect? 
 
 Judge Cooley, in his foot-note cites 
 more than a dozen decisions of the 
 highest courts, to the effect that an' Act 
 of Congress, or an Act of the Legisla- 
 ture is not the due process of law, and 
 IS not the law of the land, which can 
 legally deprive the citizen of his prop- 
 erty, his liberty, or his life. 
 
 Paragraph 355, of Judge Cooley's 
 book quotes the words of the Supreme 
 Court of the United States in two dif- 
 ferent decisions, which have never been 
 reversed or questioned. 
 
 The first quotation is: "Due process 
 of law undoubtedly means, in the due 
 
 13 
 
course of legal proceedings, according 
 to those rules and forms which have 
 been established for the protection of 
 private rights." 
 
 The second quotation is as to the 
 words from Magna Charta. »'**** 
 the good sense of mankind has at length 
 settled down to this, — that they were 
 intended to secure the individual from 
 the arbitrary exercise of the powers 
 of government, unrestrained by the 
 established principles of private rights 
 and distributive justice.'' 
 
 (Some of the decisions cited are as 
 follows: MacMillan v. Anderson, 95 U. 
 S. 37; Pearson v. Yewdal, 95, U. S. 
 294; Davidson v. New Orleans, 96, U. 
 S. 97.) 
 
 Judge Cooley in par. 356 superbly 
 sums up the gist of all these decisions, 
 saying: "Due process of law in each 
 particular case means, such an exertfbn 
 of the powers of government as the 
 settled maxims of law permit and sanc- 
 tion, and under such safe-guards for 
 the protection of individual rights, as 
 those maxims prescribe." 
 
 Use your native intelligence, and ap- 
 ply these legal principles announced by 
 the highest authorities, and by the 
 highest court in the world, and answer 
 me this question: 
 
 How does the Conscription Law, 
 rushed upon the people by Congress, 
 in i\.pril, 1917, accord with the time- 
 honored principles of Magna Charta, 
 as embodied in the Bill of Rights of 
 every State, and as crystalized in the 
 Constitution of the United States? 
 
 If Congress, under the whip and 
 spur of a President, can abolish the 
 Constitutional guarantees, which were 
 supposed to perpetually sanctify your 
 personal liberty, then it logically and 
 necessarily follows that you hold your 
 property, and your life at the mercy 
 of a partisan majority in your National 
 Legislature. 
 
 But there is another clause of the 
 constitution which is violated by the 
 conscription law; it is the Thirteenth 
 Amendment to the Constitution of the 
 U. S., adopted in 1865. _ 
 
 Of course the intention of the gov- 
 ernment was, to protect the negro, but 
 
 14 
 
 it would be strange indeed, if it did 
 not equally protect the white men. 
 
 The plain prohibition of this su- 
 preme law is, that neither slaverj'- nor 
 involuntary servitude shall exist in the 
 U. S., except as a punishment for crime, 
 after indictment by grand-jury, and a 
 verdict of guilty, by the petit jury. 
 
 As everybody knows, the preposi- 
 tions "neither" and "nor" are disjunc- 
 tive; they separate, instead of uniting; 
 the subjects referred to; consequently, 
 the use of those words prove that the 
 constitution means to prohibit any 
 form of involuntary servitude, al- 
 though such servitude might not 
 amount to slavery. 
 
 For instance: the Federal Courts 
 have punished white men in various 
 parts of the South, because those white 
 men co-erced negroes into working out 
 the debts which those negroes had con- 
 tracted. 
 
 You can't make a negro plow for you 
 this year, because he came out in your 
 debt, on the transactions of last year. 
 
 If you co-erce him in any way to give 
 you his labor, against his will, because 
 of last year's debt, you are guilty of 
 peonage. It is not a system of slavery, 
 because you certainly could not buy and 
 sell negroes under the peonage system. 
 
 But if the negro is not willing to 
 work out the debt, and you exercise any 
 sort of duress over him, to compel him 
 to 'do it, it does amount to involuntary 
 servitude. 
 
 Now let me ask this plain question, 
 in the utmost good faith j 
 
 Has the Federal Government, since 
 the adoption of the Thirteenth Amend- 
 ment, in 1865, had any lawful authority 
 to establish a system of slavery, or of 
 involuntary servitude, except as a pun- 
 ishment for crime? 
 
 Where is the lawyer who will contend 
 that Congress has the authorit}^ to call 
 into the service of the government, a 
 million men to construct post-roads, 
 work upon the harbors, and the dock- 
 yards; labor at the arsenals, or in the 
 "National Parks? 
 
 Where is the member of Congress 
 who would dare to introduce a bill, 
 compelling all young men to register, 
 in order that the government might 
 
make a selective draft of those who are 
 needed to build forts and ships? 
 
 Yet, it must be perfectly clear to 
 every mind, that the government has 
 just as much right to create a system 
 of servile labor, as it has to create a 
 system of unwilling service in the 
 Army. 
 
 The language of the Supreme Law is 
 without limit, and without qualifica- 
 tion. 
 
 "Neither slavery, nor involuntary 
 servitude shall exist in the U. S." 
 
 Can any man say that the Conscrip- 
 tion Acts do not create a system of in- 
 voluntary servitude ? 
 
 Does any man deny that it was rail- 
 roaded through Congress for that very 
 purpose ? 
 
 We read in sacred and profane his- 
 tory, of the imperial requirements thai 
 the people go up and be numbered, for 
 the purpose of taxation; but never be- 
 fore since written records preserved 
 the doings of tyrants in office, has any 
 great nation, calling itself a free people, 
 and shielded from usurpation by a free 
 Constitution, been required to drop all 
 peaceful pursuits, appear before otii 
 cial autocrats, and register themselvos 
 as fit subjects to be sacrificed to a bar- 
 baric god of war, in a foreign land. 
 
 My Countrymen, I hold here in my 
 hand, the published report of James 
 Madison, of the secret proceedings of 
 the Constitutional Convention of 1T87. 
 Almost at the beginning you see here, 
 on page 67, where it was proposed to 
 invest Congress with the unlimited 
 power to raise armies, just as it was in- 
 vested with the unlimited power to 
 establish postoffices, to coin money, to 
 establish rules of naturalization, to 
 regulate commerce, to borrow money, 
 and emit bills of credit. 
 
 I turn to later pages in the book, 
 and find, where long-headed statesmen 
 warned the Convention against the in- 
 herent danger of maintaining standing 
 armies in time of peace. 
 
 TVe go from page to page, and we 
 notice how those wise men deliberated 
 upon the best method of safe-guarding 
 our liberties against the well recog- 
 nized danger of the standing Army, 
 At length, on page 705, near the close 
 
 of the sessions of the Convention, we 
 find that our forefathers agreed that 
 the best way to safeguard democratic 
 principles, and republican institutions 
 against the admitted and formidable 
 menace of the standing army, was to 
 limit military appropriations to two 
 years. 
 
 It was argued that the Representa- 
 tives would have to return to the people 
 every two years, to give an account of 
 themselves, when asking a re-election, 
 and that therefore a two year limit on 
 an appropriation to raise armies, would 
 forever secure our people from the ad- 
 mitted menace of the standing army in 
 time of peace. 
 
 In Macaulay's History we read that 
 it was a recognized truism, "a funda- 
 mental principle of political science, 
 that a standing army and a free Con- 
 stitution could not exist together." 
 
 (See Macaulay's History of England, 
 Chapter XXIII., p. 259.) 
 
 In Hallam's Constitutional History, 
 we find him quoting an English states- 
 man who was not a democrat, and who 
 had no grievance against the govern- 
 ment, as saying: 
 
 "A standing army . . . are a body 
 of men distinct from the body of the 
 people; they are governed by different 
 laws; blind obedience and entire sub- 
 mission to the orders of their command- 
 ing officer is their only principle. The 
 nations around us are already enslaved, 
 and they have been enslaved by those 
 very means. By means of standing 
 armies, they have every one lost their 
 liberties. It is indeed impossible that 
 the liberties of the people can be pre- 
 served in any country, where a numer- 
 ous standing army is kept up." 
 
 (Constitutional History of England, 
 page 778.) 
 
 Not only has this Congress provided 
 for a standing army of half a million 
 men, but the military appropriations 
 made, by the authorization of boncis 
 and direct expenditures from the Treas- 
 ury, absolutely trample out of exis- 
 tence the two year safe-guard so care- 
 fully constructed by the makers of the 
 Constitution of the United States. 
 
 So far as the State Militia is con- 
 cerned, the Supreme Law leaves no 
 
 15 
 
room for doubt; it cannot be legally 
 used by the Federal Government for 
 any other purposes than those named 
 in the Constitution — to repel invasion, 
 to suppress insurrection, and to en- 
 force the laws. 
 
 In the Conscription Acts therefore, 
 a revolution is precipitated upon the 
 country, and what is the reason alleged 
 for this overthrow of fundamental 
 principles — the headlong rush into 
 governmental usurpation? 
 
 If you will carefully consider the 
 War Message, issued by the President, 
 you will see that this government is 
 plunging into the European cataclysm 
 for three purposes: 
 
 First, to avenge the injuries in- 
 flicted by Germany upon the United 
 States. 
 
 Second, to avenge the injuries in- 
 flicted by Germany upon certain Euro- 
 pean nations. 
 
 Third, to avert the menace to our 
 liberties, involved in German industry, 
 German commerce, German conquest of 
 territory, and German militarism. 
 
 Very briefly I will say, that the 
 record as presented by the President 
 himself, in his War Message, discloses 
 the amazing fact that Germany has 
 not changed her attitude in the slight- 
 est, nor inflicted any additional wrong 
 upon us, since February 26, at which 
 time the President went before Con- 
 gress and read a carefully prepared 
 address in which he declared that our 
 position should be that of armed neu- 
 trality. 
 
 This means of course, that we should 
 have got ready to repel any invasion of 
 our soil, and should use our fleet to pro- 
 tect our commerce upon the ocean. 
 
 Just a few days before the President 
 renewed his oath of office, he apparently 
 had no thought of sending vast armies 
 to Europe, no thought of interfering 
 and crushing the militaj-y system of 
 Germany, no thought of employing 
 huge armaments to check the expansion 
 of German industry, commerce and 
 territorial expansion of the Old World. 
 
 As I have already said, what was 
 writ, was writ. 
 
 It all preceded the President's as- 
 
 sumption of the attitude of armed neu- 
 trality. He was already in possession 
 of the facts. He was in possession of 
 Germany's threat of ruthless enforce- 
 ment of her blockade. 
 
 Everything that he knows now, he 
 knew on the 26th day of February, 
 when he took up his position of armed 
 neutrality. 
 
 In the name of a just God, what has 
 happened since, to justify such a com- 
 plete and tragic reversal of the Presi- 
 dent's position? 
 
 I cite the highest standard on the 
 Law of Nations, Vattel — the authority 
 used again and again in Congressional 
 debates by Daniel Webster, Henry 
 Clay, John C. Calhoun, Alex. H. Steph- 
 ens and Robt. Toombs. 
 
 Go and read what Vattel says about 
 the legal causes of war, and see for 
 yourself how slight ours are. 
 
 What is the cause of this war? 
 
 It resolves itself into this question: 
 What is legal notice of a blockade ? 
 
 England has blockaded Germany: 
 Germany has blockaded England. The 
 blockade runners want to get to these 
 two nations, for the big money there 
 is in it. (Vattel 335.) 
 
 If we have loaned money to Eng- 
 land and France to help make war, we 
 have not been neutral. We are still 
 doing it — the Liberty Bonds prove it. 
 J. P. Morgan cleaned up ninety million 
 dollars as part of his share. 
 
 Vattel lays down as authority that, 
 if we supply one warring nation with 
 what it needs, we are not neutral. 
 
 I have contended all along that we 
 have no moral right to sell to England, 
 France and Russia: a nation holding 
 the high moral attitude we do, should 
 not give a man a new pistol, when the 
 old one is worn out. 
 
 Germany didn't need guns nor food 
 — England needed both. 
 
 The men who supplied both got rich, 
 and they want to get richer. 
 
 The powder trust, steel trust, auto- 
 mobile trust, beef trust, flour trust, 
 shoe trust, cloth trust, want to heap 
 up mountains of gold on the blood of 
 our sons. 
 
 What is legal notice of a blockade? 
 
 I contend that suspected vessels 
 
 16 
 
should be detained until they can be 
 searched. 
 
 When that law was framed, the sub- 
 marines were not invented. 
 
 Germany contends (and this is not 
 sound law until the Law of Nations 
 has been changed) that the nature of 
 the submarine makes it impossible to 
 give a warning without destroying the 
 usefulness of the submarine. 
 
 Germany gave due notice that on 
 and after February 1st, all vessels en- 
 tering the blockaded zone would do so 
 at their own risk. 
 
 Germany says a published notice is 
 all that is necessary. 
 
 Congressman Mason of Illinois, 
 started to fight for an amendment to 
 the conscription law, on June IT, in 
 the House of Representatives, to keep 
 your sons at home. 
 
 Meetings of protest are being held 
 from Maine to California. 
 
 Why were not the volunteers per- 
 mitted to go, under Roosevelt? 
 
 Let any man go to fight, who wants 
 to go. 
 
 The injuries to ourselves, of whicri 
 complaint is now made, have been con- 
 doned by repeated and official assur- 
 ances of continued friendship, and by 
 proposals to mediate a peace without 
 victory for any combatant, or humilia- 
 tion for any. 
 
 The President said himself, that 
 peace could not be permanent if any 
 
 of the belligerents were vanquished and 
 left with rankling memories. 
 
 And he also said in his speech of 
 May 13, 1917, that we are not in the ^oar 
 hecaiise of any 'particular gi'ievance of 
 our own. 
 
 From the Woodrow Wilson of April 
 2nd, I appeal to the Woodrow Wilson 
 of December and January, and say 
 without fear of contradiction from any 
 source, that if the Woodrow Wilson of 
 January, 1917, was anywhere in the 
 neighborhood of right, the Woodrow 
 Wilson of April the 2nd, 1917, was 
 nowhere in its vicinity. 
 
 According to Vattel's Law of Na- 
 tions, and according to principles laid 
 down by Chancellor Kent in his Com- 
 mentaries, no Nation has any right 
 whatever to interfere by force of arms, 
 with the governmental system of an- 
 other. 
 
 Neither has any Nation the right to 
 avenge the wrongs inflicted by some 
 other Nation upon one of its neighbors ; 
 nor has any Nation the right to make 
 war upon a neighboring Nation, be- 
 cause of its growth in power, unless 
 that growth is an immediate, urgent 
 and unavoidable menace to the safety 
 of the smaller nation. * 
 
 (See Vattel Law of Nations, pages 
 302, 305, 306, 335.) 
 
 Note: The foregoing is the gist of 
 the address, although its length — two 
 honrs — teas too great for us to give it 
 in full in this pamphlet. 
 
 17 
 
Additional Fads for You to Consider 
 
 1st. That we are proposing to give 
 Germany an all-imder hold, by going 
 to attack her at the place which her 
 experts selected at their leisure for 
 the purposes of defense, and which they 
 have had three years to fortifj'^ and 
 make impregnable, so far as military 
 art could achieve its object. 
 
 Is it sound common sense and sound 
 military tactics to make war upon the 
 enemy where we are weakest, and 
 farthest away from our base of sup- 
 plies and reinforcements? 
 
 Shall we surrender, voluntarily to 
 the enemy, the vast advantage of mak- 
 ing the fight on ground that the enemy 
 chooses, and fortifies, and which is 
 nearest to the enemy's base of supplies 
 and reinforcements ? 
 
 2nd. If we were to spend the same 
 amount of money in fortifying our own 
 country against attack, that we are 
 now spending to finance the fighting in 
 Europe, would we not thereby render 
 our own count r}^ perfectly safe from 
 attack? 
 
 Does not the loss of every American 
 soldier, killed in Europe, weaken our 
 man-power for the purposes of self- 
 defense ? 
 
 Does not the loss of every billion dol- 
 lars, sunk in the European War, lessen, 
 to that extent, our money-power for 
 self-defense? 
 
 3rd. Germany and her allies can 
 draw soldiers from populations num- 
 bering nearly two hundred millions. 
 
 Russia is virtually out of the war, 
 and therefore the European nations 
 that are fighting the German allies, 
 can only draw from populations — 
 France, England and Italy — number- 
 ing about one hundred and twenty-five 
 millions. 
 
 Therefore, you see, at a glance, what 
 England expects of us; in fact, Eng- 
 land's expectation has been expressed 
 in the British Parliament, during the 
 last few days, by Sir Edward Carson, 
 a member of the government: 
 
 England expects us to make good 
 what she lost when Eussia drew out 
 of the war; consequentyl. our govern- 
 ment has assumed the tremendous bur- 
 den of putting at least four or five mil- 
 lions of our best young men on the Eu- 
 ropean battle-lines, with the certainty 
 that at least one million of these Amer- 
 ican soldiers will be killed ever}^ year, 
 as long as the war shall last. 
 
 Are 5^ou prepared for that stupen- 
 dous sacrifice of the best soldiers that 
 our country can produce? 
 
 4th. When the government demands 
 of the people, within six months of the 
 time war was declared, such colossal 
 outlays as seventeen billions of dollars, 
 and two millions of men, the reasons 
 actuating the government should be 
 made so plain, that the simplest mind 
 will understand. 
 
 Has that been done? 
 
 The latest declaration upon the sub- 
 ject, from official sources, is that made 
 by the Hon. Robt. Lansing, Secretary 
 of State, and we must assume that he 
 speaks by authority of the President. 
 
 Mr. Lansing, in his address to the 
 sixteen hundred officers in Xew York, 
 a few days ago. contradicts what the 
 President said in his Red Cross ad- 
 dress, contradicts what Secretary Lane 
 said, in his speech to the assembled 
 workers of his department, and contra- 
 dicts what Secretary McAdoo said in 
 his talk to the bankers and business 
 men, at Des Moines, Iowa. 
 
 Mr. Lansing discards all the previous 
 statements, that we are in the war for 
 an ideal, and to make the world "sale 
 for democracy." He no longer makes 
 the astounding assertion that our Gov- 
 ernment was created for world-wide ag- 
 gressiveness, in the interest of world- 
 Avide democratic institutions. 
 
 Mr. Lansing no longer makes the 
 amazing assertion, that we are not in 
 the war because of any special griev- 
 ance of our own; on the contrary, he 
 now says to the young officers who have 
 
volunteered to sacrifice their lives m 
 Europe, that they are g'oing across the 
 ocean, to do battle against Germany, in 
 order that our own future may be safe 
 from German attack. 
 
 If you will think the facts over, it 
 will occur at once to your mind, that 
 never before in the history of man- 
 kind, did any nation involve itself in 
 such prodigious sacrifices of treasure 
 and of blood, to ward off what is now 
 admitted to be, by the Secretary of 
 State, a danger — not to our present, but 
 to our future, and therefore imaginary, 
 instead of actual. 
 
 With a wave of his hand, the Secre- 
 tary of State puts aside the contention 
 that we have set out to repel an attack 
 which Germany has already made upon 
 us. 
 
 With a wave of his hand, Secretary 
 Lansing disposes of the silly contention 
 that we have been attacked. 
 
 He abandons all the former pretenses 
 made by Mr. Lane, made by Mr. Mo- 
 Adoo, and made by Mr. Wilson, and he 
 now says that we are not fighting on 
 account of anything that Germany has 
 done in the past, or is now doing, in 
 the present, but on account of some- 
 thing Germany may do, in the future. 
 
 Great God ! What are we to think 
 of our head men at Washington, when 
 none of them agrees with any other, 
 as to the true cause of the war, and 
 when such prodigious outlays of money 
 and men have already been pledged to 
 this preposterous undertaking, 
 
 5th. Is it worth while to remind 
 the world that the Law of Nations and 
 of God are against us, when we make 
 war without having a just cause? 
 
 Is it worth while to remind our pub- 
 lic servants in Washington City, that 
 they are the sworn subjects of the Con- 
 stitution of the United States, and that 
 this Constitution does not authorize, 
 or contemplate any other kind of war, 
 except one of self-defense, when our 
 country is being invaded hj armed 
 foes, or when domestic insurrection anil 
 concerted resistance to the laws of the 
 United States threaten the existence of 
 the Government. 
 
 Gth. In preparing for this European 
 adventure, the Federal Government has 
 already created a huge standing army 
 of enlisted men, numbering 800,000: 
 that regular army is to be kept in this 
 country. 
 
 What for? 
 
 Already the Executive branch of the 
 Government has swallowed the Legis- 
 lative, and the President has demand- 
 ed and secured more personal power 
 than any Kaiser ever possessed. 
 
 What for? 
 
 Not only has Kaiser Wilson made 
 himself absolute Dictator of Congress 
 and the Army, but he has established a 
 dictatorship over the staff-of-life of 
 100,000,000 people. 
 
 What for? 
 
 Already there has been created at 
 Washington a government by auto- 
 cratic Bureaus, fully as arbitrary and 
 autocratic as any that ever existed in 
 Russia or Germany. 
 
 What for? 
 
 Already, the people are suffering 
 from the insolent intimidations of 
 spies, deputy marshals, postmasters, re- 
 cruiting officers, and District Attor- 
 neys? 
 
 What for? 
 
 Already, the Government has cre- 
 ated a machiner}^ for the utter destruc- 
 tion of free speech, free press, peace- 
 able assemblage, and of the legitimate 
 agitation of righteous discontent. 
 
 What for ? 
 
 7th. Study conditions carefully and 
 ask yourself whether it does not seem 
 to be the fixed purpose of the Federal 
 Government to obliterate the States, 
 abolish the Militia, destroy our Con- 
 stitutional guarantees, and to estab- 
 lish a militar}^ despotism for the benefit 
 of the Aristocrats of Special Privilege. 
 
 The classes need a huge Standing 
 Army, to overawe the oppressed 
 masses, and to compel the mute sub- 
 mission of the victimized producers, 
 while they are being inhumanly ])lun- 
 dered and oppressed by the insatiable 
 beneficiaries of class-legislation. 
 
 19 
 
ID YOU KNOW that, in England- 
 
 The Roman Catholic Hierarchy sup- 
 pressed the book which informed the people 
 of the lewd, obscene questions which bachelor 
 priests put to women in the privacy of the Confes- 
 sional Box? 
 
 They are now trying to repeat the process in the 
 State of Georgia, by PROSECUTING THOS. E. 
 WATSON. 
 
 You can see for yourself what those questions 
 are by purchasing a copy of Watson's work. 
 
 The Roman Catholic 
 
 Hierarchy 
 
 The book is beautifully printed, on good paper, 
 is illustrated with many pictures, is bound substan- 
 tially in thick paper, and will tell you many things of 
 the papacy which you don't know, and should know. 
 
 Price, prepaid, = = = = = $1.00 
 Six copies, one order, = = 5.00 
 A dozen copies, one order, = 9.00 
 
 Address 
 
 JEFFERSONIAN PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 Thomson, - Georgia